Thursday, October 21, 2010

Winona Ryder Does Not Live Here Anymore

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the eagle eyes of our trusted snitch The Rolling Stone, Your Mama learned that actress Winona Ryder put her long time home in Los Angeles, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,095,000.

Arguably, Miss Ryder's professional salad days as an in-demand a-list actress who could pull in the sort of box office receipts that make executive producers swoon with delight were in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then she worked her somewhat ethereal and gauzy stuff in seriously successful films such as Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids, The Age of Innocence, and Little Woman, the latter two earning her Academy Award nominations. Since those heady Hollywood days and except for those few years right after she was picked up for shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise at Saks in Beverly Hills, Miss Ryder's worked steadily even though her star status was unquestionably dimmed. Recently, the spritely and quirky actress has experienced an upsurge in her career. In 2009 she starred in 3 feature films including The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and in 2010 she appeared in two more including Darren Aronofsky'sBlack Swan and she has at least two more films in the hopper including Tim Burton's next cinematic extravaganza Frankenweenie.

Records show that Miss Ryder picked up her soon to be former Spanish casa in Tinseltown in March of 1998. She paid $2,600,000 for the 1936 abode that was formerly owned (or occupied), according to the mens at Movieland Directory, by one time model and ack-turuss Angie Everhart and, before her, Bernie Taupin, otherwise known and Elton John's songwriting collaborator.

Listing information shows the two story house, wrapped in towering privacy hedges and dripping in wisteria vines and prickly but pretty bougainvillea, measures 3,765 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers, three of which feature finely maintained vintage tile work. Although powdery pink and baby blue are hardly the colors we'd pick and choose our private master pooper, it's damn refreshing to see these old relics of pooper days gone by preserved rather than ripped out and replaced with some tumbled stone this and black granite shit that.

One need only get their eyeballs on the fake the tee-vees mounted on the walls and the reedonkulous chenille blanket tossed and draped "perfectly" across the bed in the master bedroom to know that that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota has been up in here and removed every trace of Miss Ryder's day-core and replaced it with a bunch of bland beige crap and neutral knick-knacks that won't give any potential buyer a reason to think a person with style or taste may have actually occupied the home. Your Mama is certain that if we look hard enough we'll find an orchid or two but, seriously people, we can't stomach another orchid making a show of itself in a staged home.

Although Your Mama is not sure if he did up the now removed day-core in this house, we understand from our reading around the interweb that Miss Ryder had nice, gay decorator Kevin Haley do over at least one of her homes. Coincidentally, Mister Haley, who has worked on homes for other famous folks like Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz, has put his casually decadent house low in the Hollywood Hills on the market too. More on that at a later date.

Anyhoo, the front door opens into a wide entry hall with stained glass windows, Spanish tile floors, dark murals that look to Your Mama like they depict the Garden of Eden or some other sordid story, and a loopy scrolled wrought iron banister that swoops down the sweeping staircase that Norma Desmond, and any other queen who likes to make an entrance, would love. Also very glam, is the downstairs powder pooper complete with burgundy colored vintage tile and an antechamber blessed built in vanity table where guests can conveniently reapply lipstick, do a few lines, and/or check to make sure their chi-chis aren't coming up out of their strapless dinner dress.

Miss Ryder's soon to be former home also has a long formal living room with picture window, hardwood floors, French doors that open to the backyard area, and corner fireplace with carved wood mantel and surround, a dining room, and a narrow paneled pub room with some built in shelves, a couple of emaciated "beams" running across the ceiling that are probably just decorative, and a built in wet bar for getting one's booze on. Somewhere in there, according to listing information is a staff room and a body torture chamber more commonly known as a home gym.

The cook friendly kitchen has an oddly rustic feeling–some might call it charm, but it is decidedly not Your Mama's brand of charming–with hardwood floors, exposed antique brick walls, white cabinetry, beige counter tops, and a venting hood over the range top so big it looks like it could hoover up anyone who might dare to turn it on and stand under it. An adjacent breakfast room opens up into the quiet courtyard that separates the main house from the garage.

The well preserved house and garage wing wrap themselves around a cozy courtyard paved with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern and warmed by an a raised outdoor fire place that could probably double as a barbecue. The courtyard opens up to a classic California kidney shaped swimming pool separated from a small flat patch of grass just large enough to exercise a couple of long bodied bitches like our Linda and Beverly.

Your Mama can't be knowing if Miss Ryder's real estate plans include a downsize, an upgrade or if she's packing up and leaving Los Angeles altogether. Property records–and the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial–show that Miss Ryder continues to own a home in her home town of San Francisco, CA. All signs and signals indicate Miss Ryder paid $1,300,000 for her 3,436 square foot single family residence in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in April of 1995.

Until June of 2008, Miss Ryder owned a New York City pied a terre in the lovely Gramercy Park neighborhood at 1 Lexington Avenue that she sold for $2,200,000. As far as we know, which is next to nothing, she hasn't purchased a new pad in Manhattan or anywhere else on the east coast.

14 comments:

I love this house and could be very happy there. After I redo the kitchen. Glad Mama called out that humungo hood/fan. I can picture one of those little fluffy Hollywood ankle-biter dogs getting stuck up in one of those things.

Welcome back, Mamma. Good to see you had such a speedy and delicious rebound from the, um, physician's consultation, shall we say? It always enlivens our cold, dark, shrunken heart when a sassy person such as yourself is right back in the saddle dishing out the bizzness at hand to entertain us unworthy vermin and filthy cur. Can't find all that much to seriously criticize with regards to Ms. R's abode. When taken into context with what it could have been turned into, with nothing more than an afterthought, by the latest hip, gay decorator, I'm thinking it was probably pretty dang homey when it had her thing-a-ma-bobs strewn about.

8:53 could you be a bit clearer about Gweenie P? I probably should know immediately whom you mean, but I don't. I ask because when she went to trial for shoplifting, her housemate's identity was kept confidential, according to reports I read.

The fascinating story the Anons referenced is one of my favorite life lessons. Part 1: if you want something, don't give others the opportunity to have at it. Part 2: if you want something, go after it all out.

There seem to be more shades of beige than the human eye can detect here. Now y'all know "Mediterranean" style architecture is not one of my favorites, usually because when it's not done well it just comes out as kitsch ––– however this one is a truly well-preserved Hollywood gem.

A lovely courtyard home surrounded by streets on three sides, the listing photos show such delights as a hidden gate in the "towering privacy hedges" and some impressive coved, paneled and crowned ceiling treatments. As with most of us, I'd redo the kitchen too; although this is one brick kitchen that doesn't give me the itch, I just don't do "rustic".

Given the location on somewhat busy Doheny a little north of St. Ives ("As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives..."), the lot seems reasonable for the asking price, with its well-shielded courtyard & pool. Let's hope this is a clear sign that Ms. Ryder has seen the last of her insanity days (who in their right mind would want a walking stick insect like Ms. Cow-trow as a gal pal anyway?)

But she'd have to throw in that fabulous wardrobe in the master before I place my bid.

Ha, ha...lil' gay boy, love your "Cow-trow" comment. She drives me nuts, too. I didn't know she and Winona were roomies...jsut that they used to be besties, until Gwynnie stole the script for "Shakespear in love." Oh well...karma got her in the end. (Gwynnie, not Winona, though she's had her share of troubles, too.

Love the house...especially that yard!

In San Diego and friend of mine and I owned a house with a powder blue and light pink bathroom, too. I loved seeing that Winona still had her vintage bathroom intact!